From crime to verdict

Why this page

The rest of the atlas counts reported crimes; this page follows what happens next, when there is a suspect. The approach is that of The Marshall Project: official data read to the end, the method next to the numbers, words that do not reduce people to their trial.

Open, closed and new cases

For each office and year the Ministry publishes the proceedings opened, closed and pending on 31 December, for the register of known suspects only. Prosecutors include investigations of ordinary crimes, of those tried by justices of the peace and of the district anti-mafia directorate; first instance includes trials before a single judge, a panel of judges and the assize court; appeal is the ordinary section of the court of appeal. The same case is counted at every stage it passes through: the stages are shown side by side, not as a funnel.

Length and backlog

Average length is the one published by the Ministry for the proceedings closed in the year, from arrival at the office to closure; for districts with a detached section it is the average of their courts weighted by closed cases, and where the Ministry publishes the district the two averages match within 3%. The backlog (disposition time) is pending divided by closed, times 365: the days needed to close the open cases at that year's pace. Recomputed from the flows, it matches the Ministry's figure for every court within 2%.

The statute of limitations

From the reports of the Statistics Directorate, year by year: judgments declaring the offence time-barred in courts of appeal and trial courts, and dismissals and judgments on the same grounds by preliminary judges. The share is out of the proceedings closed by the same office in the same report; for districts and courts the last three years are added together. Courts add up to their district and districts to the national series. Prosecutors' requests to dismiss on these grounds are not added: they become dismissals by the preliminary judge.

How preliminary judges close cases

For each court, from the Ministry's report on how proceedings are closed, year by year: dismissal decrees, fast-track judgments (plea bargains and abbreviated trials together), penal decrees of conviction that became enforceable, and committals for trial. These are the main outcomes, not all of them: in 2025 they cover 91% of the cases closed by preliminary judges. Courts add up to their district; a single cell does not match the Ministry's own flows (Piacenza 2015) and is left blank. They appear in every town's profile, under its court.

Courts and their municipalities

Each municipality's court comes from the Ministry's Giustizia Map, queried one municipality at a time: jurisdiction follows Legislative Decree 14 of 2014 and does not change when municipalities merge; municipalities created later take the court of those they came from (Lu e Cuccaro Monferrato, formed from municipalities under two courts, goes with Alessandria, the court of Lu, the more populous; Mappano with Ivrea, the court of three of the four municipalities it came from). The exceptions are the courts of Avezzano, Sulmona, Lanciano and Vasto: the 2012 reform abolished them, the abolition has been postponed and they are still open, but the Giustizia Map already assigns their municipalities to L’Aquila and Chieti; their municipalities come from the «Competenza territoriale» pages of their own websites. Residents are ISTAT's on 1 January 2025. A court's figures cover its whole area, not only the town where it sits.

How the data were built

The script scripts/build_giustizia.py downloads the Ministry's open data files and the prescription reports, and stops if the recomputed indicators do not match the published ones, if courts do not add up to their districts or districts to Italy. Every figure on the page is in data/giustizia.json. The Ministry's data may be used for non-commercial purposes, citing the source and without altering them (legal notes of datiestatistiche.giustizia.it).

Sources

The catalogue: datiestatistiche.giustizia.it (Ministry of Justice, Statistics Directorate). For the method of the whole atlas: Method and sources.